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Authors

Jerome Birnbaum

Jerome Birnbaum was founder and pastor of Temple of the Eternal Light, an omni-denominational spiritual center in Brooklyn, New York, practicing Ceremonial Magick, Wicca and other traditions.

Born in Bronx, New York in 1935, he trained to be a rabbi in his youth, but abandoned his family’s Orthodox Jewish path before he could be ordained. Jerome served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, including six harrowing weeks as a POW.

After his military service, Jerome worked on early computers and electronic security systems. But he was most devoted to New York City’s high school students, to whom he taught electronics and computer repair for 25 years.

Jerome began studying Caballa and Ceremonial Magick in the 1970’s. With his teacher Simon, Jerome helped edit and refine a set of magickal texts into the Necronomicon. He went on to use that book in his own work with the Temple, which he started in 1982.

When he retired from teaching in 2002, Jerome and his wife left Brooklyn and began their long-anticipated travels across the United States. They finally settled in Utah, where Jerome died in November 2005.

In 2007, Jerome received one of the first V.A. approved grave markers to feature the Wiccan pentacle as a religious symbol.